Met’s “Clark Brothers” Downplays Sibling Rivalry

I loved “The Clark Brothers Collect” when I saw it last summer at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, and I still liked it, but not as much, at the Metropolitan Museum (to Aug. 19). The problem is that these Impressionist and modern paintings, while glorious, are very familiar to anyone who’s a habitué of these two museums: Sterling Clark founded the Clark Institute to house his collection; Stephen gave many of his masterpieces to the Met.
What gave the Williamstown show its special interest was that it played up the intense rivalry between the two brothers. The Met show puts the art-history approach first. The Clark’s version was as much about the act of collecting as it was about the collections. Adding to its edginess: It highlighted several pieces that were sequentially owned by both brothers.
I had been especially fascinated by the story behind Rodin‘s “Man with a Serpent,” a work given prominence in the Clark’s show but nowhere seen at the Met. The plaster model is still owned by the Clark Institute; the bronze is in a private collection. Sterling bought the bronze for his brother Stephen (before their epic falling-out) and kept the plaster.
After the brothers fought, Stephen decided to rid himself of “Serpent” and put it on consignment at New York dealer Knoedler. When Sterling heard it was for sale, he mischievously bought back the bronze, without letting his brother know.
The catalogue tells us:
This was the first of several attempts made by Sterling to surreptitiously acquire works from Stephen.
Another interesting contrast between the shows is that each institution put its own patron in the starring role: Sterling was admired for founding the worthy institution that bears his name; Stephen for his more advanced, adventurous taste, emphasized by the Met in its opening wall text.
At least the Met acknowledges the theme of sibling rivalry in a film that it’s screening, in connection with the exhibition: “East of Eden”!
One reason why the Met may have prioritized the more traditional art-historical approach is that this temporary exhibition must compensate visitors for the Met’s closure of its 19th-century permanent collection galleries, while it renovates them. The cream of that collection is at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, starting today, in one of those increasingly familiar (and lamentable) rent-a-blockbuster money-makers.
For more about the Clark brothers’ collections and feuds: Nicholas Fox Weber‘s The Clarks of Cooperstown, just published by Knopf.
UPDATE: Apparently that book has generated a feud all its own!